Handwork in Iceland

I had a fabulous trip to Iceland in August with my husband and mother. We were on a guided tour and it was not a knitting tour. (I know - Iceland, sheep, Lopi yarns!) But I did keep my eyes open. :)

Here's an overview of the crafty things I saw.


First of all, my crafty thing was a garter stitch cowl, the Hasukai Cowl by Hiroko Fukatsu. (I don't know how active her blog is anymore, but she makes beautiful projects if you want to check it out.)

Here I am casting on at the Toronto airport. I don't think I did much more on the project until at least half way through the trip -- I was too busy looking around and shooting a camera!

The first thing I saw at the Keflavik airport:

And the sheep definitely are roaming free. You see them in small groups everywhere. They let them out after lambing in the spring and then collect them again in the fall in a big round up. (Click here for a video taken by our guide just a couple weeks after we left of the final run into the pens.)

I did see lots of the traditional Icelandic yoke sweaters (they're traditional now, but the style wasn't adopted as Icelandic until the 1950s) in Rekjavik. They were available in lots of stores and at plenty of stalls at the flea market. The prices were all about the same, even at the second hand store. I found most of the sweaters very loosely knit (which makes them faster and takes less yarn) and was not impressed with the quality.

It was interesting that even at the same booth, you could see the personal touches of each knitter. (They are all still hand knit.) Sweaters would have different cuffs, or different collars, all within the same style, but each done to the maker's taste. Of course, this also meant that you would have good luck finding a collar or cuff that suited your style and comfort as well.

I was also surprised at the uniformity of the colour. Every store and booth had sweaters in shades of white and grey. That's it. I don't know if that is the current trend or if they don't use any dyes on the wool. It could very well be that all the shades are achieved only by sorting the natural colours of the sheep themselves.

On the second day we stopped at the folk museum in Skogar. That was a trove of hand made items.

A very fine embroidery

The museum was founded in 1949 and was the personal collection of Þórður Tómasson (first name pronounced like Thordur). It was housed in the local school and the collection was shown in the classrooms during the summer break when the building was used as a hotel!

Þórður curated the collection until he was 92!

There were lots of examples of these knitted shoe liners.

I have to think they were knitted "in bulk" to have them ready for use because they would be a high-wear item.

To have this many in good condition, I don't think these were used. The shoes you see in the bottom left of the picture above are made of fish leather. People in Iceland who couldn't afford sheep skin used fish leather for shoes for centuries. You can imagine why they wanted a woolen liner! The shoes were not very durable, and distances were often measured in how many shoes you would wear out on the way!

These days tanning fish skins (a previously unused product of the fish industry) has made a come back. You can read about Sjávarleður ("Atlantic Leather") here, a modern company that has reinvented the tanning process for durable and fashionable fish leather.

Another thing at the museum were many wooden tools and products. The most interesting display to me was the examples of personal carvings or initials:

When driftwood would land on the shore, whoever found it would carve their initials if they couldn't remove it right away. That would claim the wood (even if it floated to another shore) and mark it as theirs. Stealing this wood would be similar to stealing a horse in the old west - in other words, a very serious crime. Wood was very precious, very little grew on the island (and certainly the trees did not grow straight usable lumber) so anything that floated to the island was a gift. You can imagine that shipwrecks, however tragic to the crew, were a boon to the islanders!

When the museum was gifted a boat in 1952, it was time to get their own building. The first one was built in 1955. Þórður continued to collect artifacts and filled up the building and subsequent additions!

Colourwork mittens

I got to explain to the group why this mitten has two thumbs:

The thumb and especially where it joins the palm is a high-wear point, especially when rowing a boat! If a hole was worn in the mitten during the day, the wearer could just rotate it around and wear it the other way around. Ingenious.

There was a large collection of
spinning wheels

This was a semi-circular object - perhaps a light shade?

Spindles for spinning with wooden shafts and rock whorls.

The day after the folk museum, our group made a pit stop for gas and groceries. Look what I found in the grocery store!

This wall of yarn is only half of what they had.

There goes my yarn, right beside the food:

My kind of attitude -- let's have yarn in the grocery store with the rest of the necessities!

We saw these little rock people in various places around the island:

I believe they were glued together and then cleverly painted. (I don't know where they got the rocks because there are certainly no smooth or rounded rocks in Iceland.)

We also so plenty of little figures and creatures made out of simple shapes of wood:

These little bunnies were adorable (on display at a hotel; not for sale).

I also saw several of these figures outside of craft stores:

Looks like they're built kind of like our scarecrows (but with less straw).

This one was outside a small shop at Asbyrgi Canyon (in Vatnajökull National Park). They had the best quality knitting by far. They also had a larger variety of items.

Look! A fish tie! Probably made from leather from the company linked above.

I bought a pair of red fingerless gloves at this shop and made good use of them during the rest of the trip!

I saw this cute little construction of a traditional house on the lawn of a museum in the town of Akureyri:

This town also has the best red lights:

Can you imagine how much better traffic would be if all red lights were hearts?

We saw this wooden statue at the Hof concert hall in Akureyri:

She is a representation of the first woman to vote in Iceland, in 1863.

This is what I found hanging on the bedroom wall when we stayed in a gatehouse in Hofsstadir:

The rural area is known for its horse acumen but also has a lot of sheep. This is sheep wool attached to wooden frames and hung on the wall. Three very different varieties and they were so satisfying to pet! :)

And, finally, these knit covered posts gave us a fond farewell at the Keflavik airport security screening.